Unique To KE

This brilliant and bespoke itinerary has been set up in collaboration with our mad-keen local mountain biking crew!

A ride on the wild side of Guatemala

Singletrack descent of Volcan de Agua

Holiday time at Casa del Mundo on beautiful Lake Atitlan

Chilling out in the Spanish Colonial city of Antigua

Our longest running Central American mountain bike holiday

Having run our first, pioneering mountain biking holiday to this wild and intriguing country over a decade ago, KE's Guatemala cycling holiday has continued to evolve and to receive rave reviews. Guatemala is a mountain bikers paradise. Our Guatemala biking holiday begins in Antigua, the beautiful former capital and once the Spanish centre of administration for the whole of Central America and Mexico. Here, we start out with a singletrack ride high on the slopes of Volcan de Agua which overlooks the city. Over the next 3 days, a mix of dirt road biking and singletrack then takes us to Lake Atitlan, surely a contender for the most beautiful lake in the world, with its towering volcanoes, azure water and Mayan inhabitants. This is a full-on mountain bike holiday aimed at regular mountain bikers with a taste for the undiscovered. Working with one of the few ‘real mountain bikers' in Guatemala, the first half of the holiday will cover a lot of singletrack that has thus far been biked only by the locals and KE groups. The second half of the trip will be more of a cycling journey, following dirt tracks into the remote region of the Cuchumatanes Mountains. Here, we embark on some real ‘backcountry' biking beneath frosty 3600 metre peaks and have a rare glimpse into the local Indian life, as we visit some of the country's finest fiestas and markets. Although we have operated this trip for several years, Guatemala's infrastructure is changing rapidly and some of the dirt roads that we used to include have now been paved. To ensure that this trip stays true to character, and to remain off-road as much as we can, we continually modify this trip and seek out new and challenging trails. We may even need to make minor changes during the course of a trip to keep it real. Overall, this is a spectacular and quite unique cycling trip. Guatemala is probably the wildest country in Central America - but also the friendliest.

Explore International. This is one of our Explore International holidays. Participants on these trips can book through KE or through one of our international partners. This helps us to gather together sufficient numbers of like-minded adventurers to get your holiday up and running quickly. Led by English-speaking local guides, the cosmopolitan nature of these groups can be an important part of the experience!

Is this holiday for you?

FAT TYRE ADVENTURE - Guatemala is proving to be a mountain bike adventurer's paradise and the first half of this trip follows established tracks used by local bikers - we think that these trails are as good as anywhere in the world. After an introduction to Guatemalan singletrack on Volcan de Agua, we ride cross-country for 3 days to Lake Atitlan and then tackle a great ‘slickrock' ride above Panajachel that drops us back down to the lake again. After transferring to the wild Cuchumatanes Mountains region, we ride quiet dirt roads and jungle trails that connect the local villages, with long climbs and downhill blasts. Whilst the support vehicle cannot always follow the bikes, it is never far away. With 15,000 metres of ascent and descent, this is a holiday for regular, technically competent off-road mountain bikers with a good level of physical fitness. It does have some technically demanding singletrack ascents and descents and sections where you will have to push or carry your bikes. Mountain biking in remote areas, you need to be confident in your ability. BIKE HIRE AVAILABLE LOCALLY.